


There Are No Good Things at All

by preussisch_blau, TheCowboyArtHistorian



Series: World's End Dance Hall [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Introspection, Other, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-17 07:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5859238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preussisch_blau/pseuds/preussisch_blau, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCowboyArtHistorian/pseuds/TheCowboyArtHistorian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry struggles to forgive and move on. He can't go on blaming an innocent man for the lies of another.</p>
<p>Harrison has a choice to make, but there's really no choice at all. He can't let his daughter -helpless and innocent- suffer the consequences of his sins.</p>
<p>In which Harrison Wells makes a deal with the devil, Barry deals with his demons, and Zoom is the only one pleased about any of the ensuing developments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. we hate so fast and we love too slow

**Author's Note:**

> We are now diverging into potentially more AU-ish territory, because I'm going with Zoom's comic powers. (I mean, the show might also be going that direction -I have my theories- but until it's confirmed, then... AU. Yep.)
> 
> Also, Blue has finally figured out this thing called _chaptered_ fic. Applaud him.

Harrison is as good at taking hints as anyone else, which is to say that sometimes he can do it and other times he misses the hints entirely. However, considering his bag is where he hid the materials to make the patches that cover his soulmark, and Barry had brought it to him before fleeing? He can take that hint. Even if he's not sure if Barry _knew_ he'd put the stuff there, or took an educated guess based on the fact that he had to have supplies but never left them lying around.

The short of it is, he takes the hint to continue covering his mark.

It stings, in the part of his heart that actually cares about this whole mess despite him firmly wanting to not care any more. Though, realistically, he hadn't expected the… conversation, about them being soulmates, to go half as well as it did. (And what did it say about his expectations that an argument where Barry subtly accused him of being Eobard Thawne whilst he was recovering from being _shot_ was one he felt went surprisingly well?)

(It said that he'd fully expected to be unceremoniously tossed back through the breach at best, or locked in the Pipeline at worst. That's what it said.)

But it also makes sense. By now, everyone else has seen his bare forearm, and _that_ had been a b _a_ r _r_ e _l_ o _f_ l _a_ u _g_ h _s._ Barry hadn't been lying when he'd told Harrison the views of people lacking soulmarks on this world, which were exactly the same as those on his Earth.

Not that they hadn't moved past it, for the most part. Detective West still seemed wary of him, but that could also be attributed to how he nearly got Barry killed. And Garrick… well, he didn't really care what Garrick thought of him anyways.

The point was, if he suddenly had Barry's words on his arm _now,_ no doubt the rest of the team would become extremely suspicious, and _then_ he'd end up locked away for crimes he hadn't even committed. No matter that the words had to be different than when Barry met the presumed Dr Wells of this world. They'd justify it somehow.

There were seemingly a million reasons to keep it secret… and the only real reason he had for _not_ wanting to was so he could try to force Barry to stop avoiding reality.

(At least, that was the lie he told himself, when he refused to anymore acknowledge that he'd had a change of heart.)

* * *

He's trying to work some calculations out on the computer, trying to figure out why the speed-dampener that clearly worked on Barry did not do much beyond piss Zoom off. The problem, of course, is that Cisco has decided that since this is _technically_ still his workroom, that he is going to keep him company. Harrison wouldn't mind so much, except the boy is eating a lollipop at a just noticeable volume, and spinning back and forth in the one chair.

He really should not have gotten up to get some notes he'd made earlier.

And if that weren't bad enough, he's talking about _soulmarks._ Harrison had hoped that even if Barry were avoiding him now, distant when they had to interact, that at least the one shining spot of good would be that he'd _never_ have to hear about soulmarks again.

Never has he been so wrong.

"It's weird, ya know?" Cisco muses. "He was obsessed with that thing for a while, and now he's back to pretending it doesn't exist."

Harrison sighs, because he's clearly going to have to keep listening to this unless he cuts Cisco off. "Maybe, he finally met his soulmate again and found them wanting."

He resists the urge to touch the patch on his arm. Smothers the faint hurt that wells up at that thought.

"Dude, no offense, but this is _Barry_ we're talking about. Same guy who was willing to give you a chance despite having been soulmates with your creepy doppelgänger? There's no way he'd refuse to give this new person a chance."

Harrison bites back the snarky comment that he wouldn't call a man who _stole his counterpart's body_ his doppelgänger, if only because it would do absolutely no good. "Wasn't he ignoring it at first _anyways?_ " he asks instead.

"Up until it turned that really odd indigo, yeah. Which is even _weirder,_ because one, I've never seen one that dark before, and two, I would have thought it'd be red again," Cisco muses with another slurp on his lollipop.

That catches his attention, and he abandons math for a moment to actually look at Cisco, brows knitting together in confusion. "Red? No, no, that's impossible. His soul is yellow; there's no way his soulmate ever could be red."

"Uhhh… not sure what that has to do with anything," Cisco says, "Because, look, I know what I saw, and there is photographic evidence _somewhere,_ but Eobard Thawne? His words were definitely _red._ "

Harrison pushes his glasses up, frown deepening. "That shouldn't have happened."

"…Care to explain?" Cisco asks, eyebrows going up, "Or are you getting some kinda sadistic pleasure out of confusing me?"

He sighs, crosses his arms, glances over at his calculations for a moment. "I studied this stuff. Back when I was your age. Soulmates are always perfect complements, which _means_ their souls are complementary colours. Barry is _yellow,_ so his soulmate _should_ be in the indigo to purple range. Maybe turquoise or magenta at the outlying ends, if we want to absolutely push it- but red? Out of the question. Red and yellow _never_ match as a pair."

"Yeah, well, maybe it works differently here, because I know what I saw," Cisco says. "And you can ask anyone else who saw his mark before. Definitely. Red."

Harrison hums, then turns back to his calculations, mulling the matter over. From what he knows of this universe otherwise, it seems like that _ought_ to be the same as his, but he's honestly not seen enough living marks here to know for sure. There really is no reason Barry should have been matched to Eobard if the latter was red, unless somehow Eobard stealing his counterpart's life had some play in the matter. Which then makes him wonder how much it really relies on the _soul…_

His thoughts are interrupted yet again by Cisco, who this time is frowning at him in confusion. "Wait, how did you know Barry is yellow?"

Shit.

He thinks quickly, giving Cisco a bland look as he scrambles internally for an answer. "His soulmate is indigo. I assumed that things worked the same way here, so yellow was the most likely answer."

Which wouldn't have been a lie but for the golden yellow words hiding on his skin.

* * *

He runs.

The sound of his footsteps pounding down the hall is outmatched, not by his heart drumming fear-panic- _fight_ in his ears, but by the hiss and crackle of electricity from his pursuer.

He doesn't understand. Doesn't understand why Zoom doesn't just catch him, kill him. It's like he's being played with, the mouse in the clutches of a sadistic cat. But Harrison is going to take the opportunity this grants him.

He darts into his lab, snatches the gun up and drops onto his back. The fall jars him, sending lances of pain through the still tender scar tissue in his chest, but he ignores it. He fires, aiming at a spot that would be, if he were dealing with a normal man, ahead of Zoom's path.

Slow. Too slow.

The weapon is removed from his hands and he is hauled up by his throat. His only thought is of Jesse, in that moment. _Let her live, let her live!_

"Say something!" he finally gets out, because Zoom is just staring at him with those cruel black eyes.

"Merry Christmas," Zoom replies. And never have those words been so _chilling._

He's lowered to the ground, but not released. The claws around his throat are as tight as ever. Harrison struggles to pry them back, fights to at least breathe properly even if escape is impossible.

"I'm here to offer you a deal, Dr Wells," Zoom hisses. "Think of it as an early Christmas present."

A deal? He wants to snap that he does not make deals with _villains,_ but the truth of it is? Depending on the terms of that deal, he'd take it. All he wants at this point is to make sure everyone he cares about, everyone he _loves,_ is safe. Zoom can run rampant over both worlds if he likes, but so long as he leaves Jesse out of it, doesn't _kill_ Barry? Fine.

"What's the deal?" he rasps out.

"You are going to help me against this world's Flash, help me destroy him, and in exchange, I'll spare your _darling_ daughter's life. Return her to you safe and sound," Zoom says, and it sounds almost like he's smiling behind that monstrous mask.

He mostly supresses the slight terror he feels. Mostly. What Zoom is asking for… even if Barry does not want him around, Harrison _has_ grown fond of the brat. He's not sure he can do that. "And if I refuse?" he asks.

Zoom tilts his head, looking for all the world like he expected that answer. "I don't think you will."

His heart pounds in his chest. "I… no…"

"No? You surprise me." The claws begin to tighten, digging into his skin.

He needs time, needs time to think of a way to save his daughter without betraying the team he's found on this earth. His eyes dart nervously across Zoom's face, wishing he could see the man under the mask, see if there's any humanity left at all that might betray a bluff. "…Give me time," Harrison begs, "Just… I can't… I can't decide now."

"I think you can." The claws tighten even more.

"No! I… I… _please._ " Begging is the only thing he can think of, because he can't reveal to this monster that he needs time to decide who is worth more to him, his daughter or his soulmate. Even if he thinks he already knows the answer.

He can definitely hear the smirk in Zoom's voice as he responds. "Very well. You have two days. You will be at the breach at four."

The next thing he knows, he's been released and Zoom is nowhere to be seen. Harrison sinks to his knees, holding his throat like it will ease the pain from being choked, wishing that this was just a terrible nightmare he could wake up from.

* * *

After their argument the day he'd returned from Star City, Barry had tried to put all thoughts of Harrison Wells out of his mind. But it was hard, when the man was being strangely considerate. Like, when Caitlin had returned to S.T.A.R., and had been beginning to lay into him for leaving Harry unattended when he was still so recently wounded.

Harry's voice had echoed into the Cortex, snapping and impatient, saying he did not need to be mother henned and if Caitlin tried that _too,_ he'd throw her out just as fast.

So, that had been nice. Being rescued from Caitlin's ire. Even though he'd had no reason to do that, no reason to take the blame on himself. But then… Barry knew he was a bad liar, so there was no way he could have come up with a convincing lie in time, and he really… he didn't want to reveal the truth about the word on his wrist.

And it had nothing to do with the fact that everyone else would probably use it as a reason to think Harry was Eobard Thawne. Really.

After that, after he'd recovered, Harry had given him his space. Sure, the guy seemed to hover on his periphery a lot, like an electron caught in an energy shell, but he was quick to back off, swift to avoid being alone together. Barry, in a way, hoped it was that Harry thought he needed time to process this without being forced, and not because the guy was avoiding him now that he knew he didn't have a chance.

He had no idea why he hoped that, because the _last_ person he wanted as a soulmate was Harrison, but he did. Maybe it was because they had actually had a sort of friendship forming, before Barry found out about this. Though a bitter part of him wondered if it wasn't some plot. That Harry had been trying to lure him in close, wait until they were solidly friends and not just allies, before revealing the truth. That was something the Dr Wells of their world would have done. And even if that man had been someone else in the end, it was hard to separate the two, which made it hard to look at Harry and not see echoes of Eobard.

Either way, the guy had been really nice about the matter, in his own way. And he'd seemed to thaw a bit towards everyone else. Which was what made his sudden terse attitude absolutely jarring, the way he sounded almost dead every time he said he was fine.

Then again… it was Christmas. And Zoom did still have his daughter. Barry couldn't blame him for not being happy. It wasn't the first time he wished he was faster, fast enough to stop Zoom for good… But it was probably the first time that he wished, if he couldn't get that fast, that there was at least some way he could not just rescue Jesse, but make sure Zoom never found her again.

And that had nothing to do with Harry being his soulmate, nothing to do with the fact that he sometimes missed the warmth that had developed between them. It was because he was the hero, and that's what heroes did. They rescued innocents and kept them safe.

(At least, that was the lie he told himself, because he refused to consider that he might be having a change of heart.)

* * *

Sometimes he wondered if his life hadn't become some kind of action movie. Between the being thrown around by giant gorillas, being shot at by the police, and now bearing witness to the kind of image enhancement he'd always scoffed at when he'd seen it done on tv? Yeah. Not exactly the life he signed up for when he'd decided to rescue his daughter, but he was the only man he knew who had all but one of the skills necessary for such an endeavour.

It was interesting to note that even children's toys seemed to be the same between these two earths. Which made him more and more certain that bigger, more fundamental things also had to be the same. Like the impossibility of a yellow soul ever being bonded to a red one.

Not that he hadn't combed through the security feeds at S.T.A.R., until he found one that showed what he was looking for. Barry, right arm bare to the world, and scarlet written up his forearm. Which showed him all he needed to see, and raised a very interesting question indeed.

Namely, how had Eobard Thawne managed to break things so _badly?_

He didn't really have time to consider it, though. The Trickster and Mardon were still at large; neither of them had been at the shipping facility when Barry had gone last night. Just a lot of C-4 dreidels, and Harrison had not resisted the overwhelming urge to smack his palm into his forehead when he'd heard how Barry had gotten himself and Detective Spivot out of that situation.

_"So, yeah, I just made wind vortexes-"_

_"Vortices," he corrected absently._

_Barry shot him a look, one that he studiously ignored because it reminded him all too much of how Tess would look at him when she felt he was more interested in being correct than in anything else, even the truth. "Okay, fine, wind_ vortices _, by spinning my arms and kind of… flew us out of there."_

_He had expected to hear that he'd just cleared a path, which would have been a little dumb, but reasonable. But that? That was when Harrison introduced his face to his palm._

_"What?" Barry had snapped, offended. "You think you would've had a better idea?"_

_"Yes," he replied in a long-suffering tone. Harrison slid his hand down the side of his face as he looked up at the rest of the group. "I would have_ walked _out of there a lot sooner. C-4 doesn't detonate except under very specific circumstances: a combination of extreme heat and a shockwave. You can drop it, set it on fire, irradiate it,_ shoot it with a rifle. _Doesn't matter. The only way any of those dreidels would have gone off before the Trickster detonated them is_ potentially _if you'd sped out of there. Potentially."_

_He got those looks again, the ones that asked how a scientist and a businessman knows so much about weaponry. He ignored them, in favour of quirking an eyebrow at a -pardon the pun- shell-shocked looking Barry._

_"…Oh."_

Oh, indeed. He still has a strong urge to take Barry under his proverbial wing and teach him everything he knows about weapons.

Though Barry would probably be late for lessons if he did teach him, and Harrison is beginning to wonder if that is just an ironic trait all speedsters share, because his watch says it's 16:05 and there's still no sign of Zoom. He is half-tempted to leave, but he is afraid Zoom would take his lack of presence as a flat "No". Which was not acceptable, because he still had not decided.

The breach bubbles and expands, and Zoom lands in front of him.

Harrison can feel his heart beating faster, no matter how hard he tries to remain calm and collected.

"Have you decided?" Zoom asks.

He braces himself. "I need more time."

Zoom laughs at him, mockingly. "Don't we all. Decide."

Harrison shakes his head firmly. "I need more time."

The speed-demon looks at him, thoughtful in a way, before he replies. "Maybe if I go up there and kill a few of your new friends…" he muses.

"No!" Harrison can't help the fear that colours his tone.

"Or that speedster soulmate of yours. The last time we met he looked a little worse for the wear; maybe I should put him out of his misery."

He presses down on the panic welling up within him, because _how could Zoom know that?_ "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have a soulmate, never have."

Harrison crosses his arms over his chest, trying desperately to keep from quivering.

"Don't toy with me, Wells. Your awful penmanship is unmistakeable."

That's his excuse? Harrison is almost certain it's something else, so he scoffs, ready to retort. "It's _two letters._ I fail to s-" his words end in a choked noise, because Zoom is no longer in front of him, Zoom is behind him, arm around his throat.

He grabs for Zoom's arm, trying to pull it down enough that he can tuck his chin under and break the chokehold. There are clawed fingers on his right arm, yanking his sleeve down, revealing the false blankness of his arm. Not that Harrison really has time to applaud his own cleverness, not when a blink of an eye has the sharp pain of the latex being ripped free. Not when his arm is being yanked back, almost wrenched from the socket, joints popping with the strain.

He struggles, uselessly, knowing Zoom is reading the words he'd so carefully hidden. And if Zoom knows enough to send doppelgängers from Barry's life after him, then he doubtless knows enough to tell these are Barry's words, if only because they are speed force yellow.

Laughter rings cold and merciless in his ear.

"I will grant you one more day, but know this, Wells," Zoom whispers harshly against his ear, and he can't even really feel the air from it. Rationally, he knows it's the mask. Irrationally, it makes Zoom seem even less human. He can't help the shiver that crawls down his spine. "Regardless of what you choose, I will see to it that everything you love is destroyed. In one form or another."

He's pushed to the ground, and Zoom casually walks back towards the portal. He glances over his shoulder. "I'll tell your daughter you said, 'Hello.'"

Then he's gone, in blue lightning and the burble of gravitational distortion. Harrison clutches his shoulder, trying to focus on the pain from strained ligaments, the agony of where his still-healing bullet wound was stretched too far. Anything to not think of the possible reasons for Zoom's vendetta, the fear he has for Jesse, and the growing concern for the fate of Barry Allen.

* * *

The only reason he gives Wells more time is because he knows what his answer will be in the end. No matter what else he has promised, he's offered to return dear little Jesse, safe and sound. And if he knows anything about his enemy, he knows that man won't give up the chance to save his daughter. After all, Wells has shown time and time again that he doesn't really care about people. Much less that soulmate of his, given how he'd seemingly immediately pushed the Flash into trying to take him down.

Zoom thinks they could work well together, if Wells would just shed those last few pesky morals of his. He's certainly vicious enough.

He'd lied, a little, about how he knew that Wells had become bonded to the Flash of so-called Earth-1. He'd had his suspicions before, when he'd first started investigating the young speedster, looked for ways to make him easy pickings. Finding out that he'd been bonded to the other Harrison Wells, finding out his soulmark had disappeared without a trace after the singularity that had joined their worlds together.

The other universe is a fragile, broken thing, limping along because it hadn't been allowed to die. If Harrison Wells had once been Allen's soulmate, had been killed in a way that erased him completely from existence… A world struggling to continue to exist, despite the paradoxes that twisted time around him in a painful way whenever he crossed over into it, would have eagerly latched onto anything that would help it heal, even to a small degree.

Even if it meant tangling up a man from another universe in its tortured snares.

Seeing those two letters in impossibly dark indigo on Barry Allen's wrist had lent strong weight to his theory about how this universe was trying to correct the holes ripped in it.

Though it hadn't been the _handwriting_ that had given Wells away; his hand wasn't _that_ distinct. It had been the _colour._

There was the most curious thing that happened when you observed the world at certain speeds, certain frequencies, and it was that even the motions of ordinary people were accompanied by a blur of energy. A blur that always echoed the colours of their souls. 

Appear in the right place, at the right time, at the right speed and frequency, and one could see a rainbow of movement. A multitude of hues, vibrant, pale, umbered, varying degrees of saturation. Distinct, always distinct, no matter how the lines of motion intercepted, except when soulmates touched. That was when you saw the interesting colours. 

Sometimes they pushed white -something he had never seen before-, sometimes they blurred into grey -not quite the cool grey of a pair that hadn't met, but something warmer-, and rarely they fell towards black -never quite there, but always far darker than any individual soul he had ever seen. He doesn't know what the different blendings mean, but he knows they're _important._

And if you just slowed down and looked as the rest of the world raced past, you could watch that rainbow sea part before you, to reveal the most impossible darkness following the movements of a single person. 

Seeing words written in speed force gold along the length of Wells' forearm had really only confirmed what he already thought he knew.

* * *

When all was said and done, when Mardon and Jes- _the Trickster_ were locked away once more, Barry finds himself mostly alone in S.T.A.R. Labs, entirely by his own design. He has a lot to think about, a lot to consider, and maybe tonight isn't the best night to do it -it's the West family Christmas party, and of course he has to be there-, but he's not sure when he'll be willing to consider some of these thoughts again.

Hearing about what happened to Patty's father made him think about his own life, how his mother had been murdered and he'd been willing to do whatever it took to fix that. And when he'd been convinced by his alternate self to not intervene, he'd taken the resulting helpless rage out on a man he'd had no hope of beating.

Maybe it hadn't ended up with him in prison, but it had ruined a lot of things, following that vengeful impulse.

Barry watches Harry through the glass as he considers this. It's kind of surprising that he hasn't been noticed yet, but Harry's back is to him, and that's probably why.

What he does know, is that he can't keep looking at Harry and see Eobard Thawne. He can't look at Wells' face and see the enemy. For all the evil Thawne had done, a lot of good had come from it too, and… there had been something between them, something that he'd be an idiot to try to deny. If he thought only about before discovering the truth… he couldn't help but still like the man he thought he'd known.

Which said something about him that he maybe wasn't going to analyse ever.

He exhales slowly, and just tries to let go of all that anger and hate he still feels for the last man he knew with piercing blue eyes and a desperate drive to do whatever it took to get back to the home he knew. He speaks aloud for his own benefit, because the man he needs to say the words to no longer exists.

He's not sure how well he succeeds until Harry turns around, notices his presence, and all he feels is a lingering sort of sadness. No anger because of his face, no slight urge to punch him for crimes he didn't commit. Though there's still the anger of being lied to, the urge to hit him for hiding how they were connected, but he can't even blame him any more, not when they both had made it clear to each other from day one that neither of them _wanted_ this.

And he tries to ignore the hurt that wells up when Harry turns down his invitation.

* * *

He would have rather been at the West family Christmas party that night, but he couldn't. Even if he can't bring himself to celebrate, not with his daughter kidnapped, being surrounded by happy people isn't so bad a place to be. Of course, there's Barry's trigger happy girlfriend to consider, but he's pretty sure he wouldn't end up dead from encountering her again, so long as Barry was there.

Except, no, he couldn't, and not because of his own personal tragedies, but because he had to meet Zoom.

Harrison laid, sprawled on his back on his cot, and stared at the ceiling, a grim smile twisting the corners of his mouth despite having no reason to smile. This was just further proof for his thoughts that he wasn't _allowed_ to have anything that he loved, that whatever good things he had would eventually be taken from him, ripped from his grasp cruelly and quickly.

It was self-pitying to the highest degree, and ordinarily he didn't indulge in such behaviour. After all, things could be worse. On this Earth, Harrison Wells' reputation had been destroyed by 'his' failure with the particle accelerator. He had that much, at least, that his company was still around and successful, his public reputation intact.

Though that hardly seemed to matter with a dead wife, a kidnapped daughter, and a soulmate he had just agreed to work _against._ What choice did he have, though? Zoom would have killed his daughter, probably killed _him_ if he refused, and then where would that leave Barry. Where would that leave his team. At least this way he thought he might be able to come up with some way to keep everyone _alive._

Which was a cold comfort indeed, but the only one he had.


	2. broken hearts all around the spot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2x10 did not give me a lot to work with for this one, but I can't reasonably skip it, so.

Barry wakes up in a cold sweat. He chances a guilty glance over at Patty's sleeping form next to him -she still seems to be asleep, thank God-, before he slowly slips from the bed and heads for the kitchen.

Another nightmare.

He already only has the dimmest recollection of it, but what he does remember is chilling enough that he is kind of _glad_ most of it had faded, leaving only the lingering rush of adrenaline. Barry grabs a glass from the cabinet, fills it with water, and downs it in a few long swallows. His mouth still feels a bit fuzzy from fear, even then, so he refills the glass, though this time he only sips at it.

Usually, his dreams are about Patty. And not in the pleasant way. Well, no, they _started_ pleasant enough, them going out on a nice date or sitting at home or whatever. But they always end the same, with Zoom killing her, him not being fast enough to save her.

Sometimes, though… Sometimes, the one Zoom murdered wasn't Patty. And he isn't sure what makes him feel more guilty: the fact that he dreamed about her more often than any member of his family, any of his other friends… or the fact that he'd never dreamed about _this_ person before.

Barry sighs and sets his glass down, half-empty, the dryness of his mouth temporarily assuaged. He rubs his eye with the heel of his hand, debating whether he should run by S.T.A.R. Labs or not. It's on the early morning side of the middle of the night, he notes with a glance at the clock, which meand that Harry would be asleep. Hopefully.

There is the remote possibility that somehow all the travelling in time Barry had done already had given him powers like Cisco's, the ability to see through time, but that is so remote and so improbable that he mostly discards it out of hand. Mostly. The lingering terror of watching Harry die, blue lightning crackling around his form, seeing his body fall to the ground…

He looks guiltily towards the bedroom once more before deciding it wouldn't _hurt_ to check in on Harrison.

* * *

It is early, possibly too early, but sleep and Harrison have never been on the greatest of terms under the best of circumstances. When you add the uncomfortable accommodations at S.T.A.R. Labs -but it isn't as if he could find another place to say, there was too much risk in constantly coming and going from the lab- and the years he'd spent getting very practical experience in surviving on as little sleep as possible in stressful, life-threatening conditions -and he thinks Garrick had some nerve, incorporating parts of a military uniform into his costume when he'd not even been old enough to serve in the war that had made those uniform pieces _necessary_ -, it ends with his current spate of insomnia.

Thus, exercise. There are, of course, the old adages about physical health being connected to mental health, and whilst they're not necessarily _wrong,_ they did not entirely sum up the reasons behind why he now seemingly wastes his time on the physical instead of figuring out how to rescue his daughter, steal his soulmate's speed without killing him. It is just very difficult to fret needlessly when your muscles burn with exertion, and the faint flood of endorphins did do _wonders_ to clear his thinking when he got too bogged down in a cycle of worry-terror-guilt.

He exhales slowly as he pulls himself back up the pipe, and then pauses because he can hear the sound of footsteps echoing down the curve of the hallway. Sometimes, he curses his taste in architectural design -there wasn't any reason for the main lab to follow the path of the particle accelerator beyond aesthetics-, curses the fact that apparently his doppelgänger at one point shared in this sensibility, because he has no way of seeing who is here at this hour until they round the bend.

In a way, Harrison isn't surprised to see Barry, though Barry certainly looks surprised to see him.

"Uhhh…" Barry says, as he looks up at him.

Harrison sighs and takes a deep breath, before lowering himself in a controlled motion with an equally controlled exhalation. He straightens his legs until he feels his feet touch the ladder he'd used to get up to the pipe in the first place, makes sure he is balanced before releasing his grasp.

"Morning," he says, because at last glance it's definitely morning. Very early, hovering around 0400, but morning nonetheless.

"Good… morning…?" Barry tilts his head, eyebrows drawn together. His gaze isn't entirely focused on Harrison's face, and so he follows the path of Barry's eyes to-

Ah.

He sinks down on the ladder, shifts so he sits on top of it, and crosses his arms to hide the uncovered words on his skin. It isn't exactly comfortable to wear a patch of latex, no matter how thin or carefully applied, twenty-four/seven, so he hadn't bothered to re-apply the cover when he'd anticipated at least two more hours to himself.

At least it had been Barry who had shown up.

"Couldn't sleep?" he asks.

Barry looks away, then, nods once. "Pretty much. Thought I'd get some running in. Didn't think you'd be up."

"Hm," he tilts his chin up in a brief nod of his own. "Well, don't let me stop you."

"I… right. Yeah. No, wasn't planning on it," Barry says, expression going from curiously startled to definitely chagrined in the span of eight words, which is really impressive in a way. "Sorry, do you need help putting that back?"

Harrison pointedly ignores the way Barry's gaze, when not finding something fascinating on the floor or walls, keeps flicking to his arms. The boy might have had super speed, but he's not entirely subtle, and it wears on his nerves a bit that apparently leaving his soulmark uncovered at any point bothers Barry that much. "I got it out by myself, so no."

"Yeah, but you didn't do pull ups before you got it out."

He quirks an eyebrow at that. "No, I'd just finished some push ups, a few crunches, and a light run. I think I can manage on my own."

Of course, his idea of light exercise might be a bit skewed by his time in the army, but that's besides the point.

"…Right," Barry says, clapping his hands together, eyebrows raised. The corners of his mouth pull back slightly. "Guess I'll, uh, just go for my run then?"

"Yeah," he replies, finally uncrossing his arms so he can grab the hem of his tank top and tug it up to wipe away the sweat that runs in annoying rivulets down his face. "You do that."

He doesn't miss the final look Barry sends his way, one oddly inscrutable for how open the kid usually was about his expressions. It makes something sour settle in his stomach.

* * *

"I'm fine, really," Barry insists.

"You had a chandelier fall on you. A chandelier!" Harry yells.

The concern grates on him, because Harry had seemed to grow even more withdrawn in a way since Christmas. Sure, he'd lost that numb seeming funk he'd been in, returned to his usual snarky self, but there's a distance there, a harshness that hadn't been present before. And more often than not, he locks himself away in a lab, writes and erases endless equations on boards he dragged out from storage.

"What do you care?" he snaps tiredly. "I'm not dead, so we can still figure out how to make me faster to stop Zoom."

"What do I- What- No, you are not changing the subject, Barry."

"I'm pretty sure I just did."

Harry glares at him, and he meets it, because honestly? That isn't nearly as scary as Eobard had been, and Barry is just a little bit done with being lectured. Yes, he gets it, the safety of both their worlds was at stake. And the man's daughter was in danger. But he feels fine, felt fine! And it's not as if he could have really helped them find Turtle. Cisco had the computer thing covered, he was sure Harry also did, and where did that leave him? Zipping around the city, wasting energy, actively looking for the guy?

"You could have died. I'm fairly certain not even you could have recovered if a piece of metal from that thing went through your _heart_ or if it landed on your neck and _broke it._ "

Harry brings both his hands up to the sides of his head, fingers wrapped tightly in his hair as he turns away. "And yet, you're still more worried about your _girlfriend._ "

"Would you be happier if I'd just let her die? Is that it? Because _she_ definitely wouldn't have survived that!" Barry pushes himself from the chair he'd been shoved down onto when he'd entered the workroom.

"She did shoot me," Harry reminds him acidly. "It doesn't engender warm, fuzzy feelings or concern for her health, especially not when she is distracting you from what is actually important."

"What is actually- Right! Because Zoom has been _such_ a threat lately!" Which was a stupid and childish thing to say, and he regrets it the moment the words leave his mouth, because Harry spins around to give him an absolutely flat stare that is somehow worse than the glaring from before.

"Because he needs to be actively attacking people on this earth before we can take him seriously?" he hisses.

"Okay, that is not what I meant and you know it."

Harry raises an eyebrow. "Do I?" he says, voice still deceptively calm. "Because from here, it sounds very much like you just said that it doesn't matter what he might be getting up to at _my_ home, what he might be doing to _my daughter,_ so long as it doesn't interfere with your ability to get laid!"

Barry flinches at how Harry's voice grows louder towards the end of his brief rant. Not that he doesn't deserve it, because that had been a really callous thing to say, and maybe he needs to have Caitlin double check to make _sure_ he hasn't suffered any traumatic brain injury that might have explained his momentary lapse of empathy. He really does feel bad about having said that.

"That's not what I meant! You're right, you're absolutely right, we don't know what he's doing when he's not attacking us here and I'm _sorry,_ I really didn't mean it like that!"

Harry spins sharply on his heel, storms over to one of his boards with clenched hands. He looks, for a moment, like he's going to put his fist _through_ the board, and Barry zips over to grab his wrist before he does anything hasty.

"I really am sorry," Barry mutters, unable to meet the coldness of Harry's eyes. "I just… it's not exactly easy balancing the superhero stuff with trying to have a mostly normal life."

Harry sighs, and then yanks his wrist from Barry's grasp with what should not have been surprising strength. He's seen the man's arms, for crying out loud, has seen him finish a set of pull ups (and proceeded to feel even guiltier about the dreams that had followed _that_ than he had over any of his nightmares), so there should have been nothing that came as a shock when it came to Harry's strength.

He still blinks at Harry, though.

"Normal lives are not for men like you and me, Allen. Once you accept that basic fact, then you will have a much easier time of things."

* * *

He’d messed up. He’d messed up big time and he knew it. He should have told her when he had the chance, and he’d had so many perfect chances, and he wasted them all.

Barry leans forward in his seat, rests his face in his hands with his elbows on his knees, and sighs.

He can’t help but replay the conversation he just had with Patty over and over in his head, which does nothing to help the lingering exhaustion of a late night stopping the Turtle. It just makes it worse, makes everything worse. It's distracting him from doing his job -his actual one, forensics, though there wis a case to be made that this could distract him from being a superhero too-, and he can’t help but glance up at the report he is supposed to be typing up about a fairly run-of-the-mill crime. He can’t even remember which report it's supposed to be, not without reading over what he’d already written. (Convenience store robbery, that’s what it was.) Which, okay, he isn't perfect, he is human, but you’d think he’d at least be able to remember what cases he's working on.

Of course, that particular crime just isn't any help to think about, because it reminds him of how Patty had told him -okay, the Flash, but he _is_ the Flash- about how her father had been murdered. And that, of course, leads to the reminder that she had broken up with him because he hadn’t been able to tell her the truth about why he kept missing dates, breaking plans, carries the weight of two worlds on his shoulders.

_”It’s time to move on. From everything.”_

_“Patty, wait. Patty…”_

_“No. I’m done waiting.” She looked at him sadly. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, and I can’t… I can’t do this any longer. I mean, I have my suspicions, but-”_

_Patty paused then, frowning, and shook her head. All Barry could do was stare at her in shock, all the half-formed words, the truth that he’d been ready to spill, stalled in his head and blocked from coming out._

_“I don’t know if this is because you’d rather pursue something with your soulmate,” she finally said, nodding towards his right arm, “but… I’m done. I’m really done. And I just. I hope that you don’t treat them the way you’ve treated me. Because whoever they are? I can’t think of anyone who’d deserve that.”_

He pushes away from his desk, goes to check his centrifuge. Still running. No good as a distraction. Perhaps the spectrometer had results? And no luck there, either. Barry starts to sort through the incoming cases, picking out the ones that he could start work on now and setting the other ones aside for when the machines he needed for tests were free.

It isn’t much use.

She’d left, quickly, after her final words to him, and he’d only been able to stand there and watch her leave. Unable to speak, unable to just run and catch up to her and tell her it has _nothing_ to do with his soulmate, his soulmate is an unmitigated _ass_ and he’d be an _idiot_ to choose him over her for a romantic relationship (and did Harry even do romance? The guy had managed to have a kid, but that didn’t mean anything. And why is he even _thinking_ about that?), it had everything to do with the fact that he is the Flash and he was terrified for her safety and he stupidly kept thinking that if he just kept her out of that part of his life, she’d be safe.

On the one hand, Harry had advised him to do as much. On the other hand, keeping Iris in the dark last year had only put her in worse danger in the end, because she wasn’t even aware there was a target on her back. And maybe Zoom is different, isn’t as thoroughly ensconced in his life as Eobard Thawne had been, but. _But._ Zoom knew enough to send Linda Park after him. What else could Zoom know about his life?

And now?

He’d lost someone else he loved. And it's stupid and self-pitying and he knows it, because it's his fault, but Barry can’t help the thought that it isn’t fair. That he’d finally settled on doing the right thing, telling the truth, and it was far too late.

* * *

He carefully settles the sample of brain matter into a tube of preservative chemicals, then slides it into the small fridge to keep it cold. It isn’t an ideal long term storage solution by any stretch of what he understands about biology, but it would do for the amount of time he needs to clear any digital traces of his presence in the Pipeline.

Harrison frowns at the computer as he breaks into the security feeds. The security system itself is… well, it doesn’t quite compare to what he’d had set up for his S.T.A.R. Labs; the fact that the team here had mentioned several unauthorised persons getting in, even after they’d upgraded it, is proof enough. Hell, even he had managed to get _out_ of here undetected at one point, when he’d first arrived on this earth. And apparently this is the _improved_ system.

Whomever had made the improvements had not thought to remove the admin privileges for Harrison Wells, however, and he had long ago figured out how to access his false counterpart’s user account just in case he ever needed to do something like this. (If it had been a matter of simply passcodes, he might have been done in, but there are areas that use biometric security as well, and that is easily bypassed when you _are,_ for all intents and purposes, the man they had been coded to allow in.)

He carefully edits the recordings, adjusting and splicing footage until there's no hint he was down in the basement levels, until it appears he had gone about his normal routine. There is, however, nothing to be done for the fact that Mr Glosson apparently went from standing perfectly healthy to collapsed on the floor, blood streaming from his nose, and that vaguely annoys him.

Harrison leans back in his seat, hand up in front of his mouth and curled in a loose fist as he considers this.

Honestly, if there had been another way, he wouldn’t have killed Glosson. But he needs that brain tissue, needs to figure out exactly how the man stole the energy from his surroundings so he could use that directly on Barry. It hadn’t appeared to have any lasting ill effect, which makes it a viable base for stealing Barry’s speed force without harming him.

He sighs, reaches down and rubs the patch over his soulmark.

It's ironic, isn’t it? He’d murdered one man to keep from having to kill someone who would likely condemn him for that action.

A grim smile stretches the corners of his lips as he leans back towards the keyboard, begins work on corrupting the feed from Glosson’s cell with sporadic timing, so it appears as though some external force had disrupted the security camera starting long before the man's demise. He leaves a good, long pause in the span of time where he’d been down there, collecting his sample, before allowing the feed to pick back up with its view of Glosson’s corpse cooling on the floor.

He knows there will be some suspicion on the morrow, when the body is discovered, so he begins to steel himself against it. Glosson was a necessary sacrifice, a man of no consequence in the face of the greater good. Even if two worlds hadn’t been at stake, even if his daughter’s life weren’t in danger, the man had little value for more than what his abilities could be exploited for. Glosson had been, after all, a sociopathic criminal, the worst sort. If it had just been sentimental _items_ he stole, that might have been one thing.

But he felt he had the right to commit murder to keep a human being because of their sentimental value to someone else, and that was reprehensible, even if Harrison feels little regard for the person Glosson had tried to murder.

He tries to not consider too deeply the fact that most of his ire had to do with how much Barry had been distressed by Glosson’s actions; ignores the fact that he feels a macabre sort of pleasure at having eliminated that particular threat. That path leads to things he cares not to name, the creeping belief that perhaps it is less something dark that rises up in him in response to mortal threat, and more that the core of him _is_ that darkness, barely shrouded by a veneer of humanity.

After all, everyone who sees his colour on Barry’s arm has something to say about the shade, it seems. It makes an almost perverse sort of sense that it might more accurately reflect his nature than he’d like to admit.


End file.
